


The Messidorist Conspiracy Does Not Exist

by Heubristics



Category: Fallen London | Echo Bazaar, Sunless Sea
Genre: Gen, Miscellaneous Notes, Occasional Body Horror, Short Ideas, The Neath is full of weirdos, Typical Fallen London Content Warnings, Weird revolutionaries, Weird zee captains
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-07
Updated: 2020-03-26
Packaged: 2020-04-12 00:58:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 10,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19121332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Heubristics/pseuds/Heubristics
Summary: A general collection of short writings, notes, bits of background information, and other such things I've written in my own little corner of the Fallen London fandom. They're mostly to do with assorted strange peoples and groups, with a loose thread of revolution between them.None of this is canon, of course, but the revolutionaries of Fallen London care little for the tyranny of authors over their creations.Including:* Strange Catches of the Gulper Queen!* The Tale of the Inconspicuous Informant* Strange People of the Neath* Strange Revolutionary Groups of the Neath* On the Return of London's TreesLatest Chapter: Variants of the Seeking Faith





	1. Strange Catches of the Gulper Queen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Gulper Queen always has meat for sale.

The Gulper Queen is a cheerful little Ligeia-class fishing steamer oft sighted trawling around the waters of the Southern Archipelago, owned and captained by the Well-Meaning Fisherman (occasionally the Well-Meaning Pirate). Once it was the Phantom Glass, and its hold shone with illegal sunlight; then it was the Muck Racker, and it carried fungal timber from Demeaux Island to the off-shore villages and islands of former London. Now it is the Gulper Queen, and is noted for three things: the colourful paint scheme on its hull to appear as a multicolored, cartoonishly friendly zee-beast; the jaunty harmonica tunes that carry from it often by the Fisherman; and in recent months an amazing amount of luck when it comes to fishing.

Zee-beasts, fish, and lesser monsters swarm to the Gulper Queen as if by magic, it seems. The zee around it constantly churns with apocyanic froth, the sides are regularly gore-splattered with fresh catch, and its hold is almost always full to bursting every time it makes port. Some say that the Gulper Queen’s luck comes from a dark pact made with the Drowned Man, while others say the Fisherman rescued a Surface mermaid near the Canal who blessed him with power over the zee as a reward. The Fisherman only shrugs when asked and says he reckons it might just be his new cologne (from far Italy! It's got bergamot!), but no one seriously believes him. Certainly, a strange melodic voice has joined his tunes as of late. And hired crews have reported an unknown creature slithering around the lower decks. But the Well-Meaning Fisherman is silent on these matters. And enough meat will bury even the most active of tongues.

Meat for sale! The Gulper Queen always has meat for sale! And should your crew encounter the ship at zee, here are a few possible catches of the day:

  1. **Thalatte Ztew Zurprise -** Is this meat? The Fisherman confirms with disappointment that it is. He all but pays you to take it, and promises that it is very likely all edible and non-toxic. The taste is best left unmentioned and the ingredients are unfamiliar, but at least it is filling...and cheap. And if eaten in the dark, heavily salted and spiced, while quite drunk...you could almost compare it to London rat-and-spider stew. Which is not saying much, but still.
  2. **Whisk’s Homemade Fish Jerky Biscuits -** Zalted fish and hardtack are the staple of the zailor’s diet, and this is basically both of those things in one dish. Is it fancy? No. Is it tasty? Not especially. But it’s meat, and it will keep for weeks, and it won’t glow with unearthly energies or turn your stomach inside out or try to eat you like some other dishes will. There’s something to be said for simplicity.
  3. **Silk-Baked Zee-Zcorpion -** There are no lobsters in the Unterzee, but there are these things. They vaguely resemble lobsters at least, if lobsters had venomous stingers and could spit silken nets up to eight feet distant. Once baked in a silk packet and deshelled the flesh is light and mildly acidic, and leaves one’s breath delightfully lemon-scented. Do watch out for the pregnant ones: their young can leap and sting even before birth.
  4. **Sliverling Platter -** Made from an entire sliverling school, those tiny flying fishes that cluster in the dozens to the hundreds all around the Unterzee. Their meat and blood is sweet and their bones are like finely spun sugar; eating one is as simple as crunching it in your mouth and swallowing. Just watch out for the rest of the school hopping toward you to follow their leader; you can’t eat just one.
  5. **Bound-In Shark Ribs -** Even in death the shark’s remains are still bound to the steel cage that trapped it: picking the meat from the metal is not always clean. The meat closest to the iron ribs is bruised but tender with a copper tang, while the flesh farther away is oily, bitter, and meatier. “Imagine,” the Fisherman often sighs when he carves one up, “What they’d taste like if they weren’t tortured so.”
  6. **Stewed Jillyfleur -** It is poured from a spigot directly into the bowl: more like a warm jelly than a conventional stew, something salty and bitter and slightly electric. The purple stains your lips after you drink it, and should be washed off before bed to avoid strange disorienting dreams. It is best that you do not look at it directly, but if you do to remember that neither the faces or their pleas are real.
  7. **Cutlets of Wyrm Eternal -** A Wyrm Eternal is a zee-monster with no end, a jawed ambush worm that stretches unending from its zee-floor lair until cut. This specimen was over half a nautical mile long before the Fisherman worked up the nerve to hack it apart. Each segment of its carapace is filled with a spongy, slightly nutty meat; there isn’t much per cutlet, but there are literally hundreds of cutlets to go round.
  8. **Gossamer Eel Pie -** Zailors’ eyes water when they see it brought out: a taste of London at zee, a pie with jellied gossamer eel filling. A versatile dish for any occasion, it can be served hot or chilled, spiced or straight, and pairs equally well with grog or mushroom wine. The eels are tender, the flesh like a buttery wind, and the jelly is sweet. Just don’t ask where the pie crust came from.
  9. **Fatmouth Hydra -** They’re squat and spiny bulbous-eyed horrors, but this is proper fish! Well, technically a cephalopod disguised as a fish, but no matter. The rubbery layers of outer fat give way to large tendrils of chewy rich muscle, and tender bands of soft flesh around the false bone. When cooked in its own ink, it becomes a hearty and surprisingly complex dish.The Fatmouth, your crew agrees afterwards, is why no Surface feast could match the bounty of the Unterzee.
  10. **Steamed Angler Crab -** No Surface crab pot could have caught this specimen; the body had to be steamed over the smokestacks of the ship. Hammers and chisels crack open exoskeletal plates the size of hansom cabs to reveal gobs of delicate white crab-flesh as big as cannonballs, enough to serve a Dreadnaught crew; an entire barrel of butter is called for. It will need to be quickly salted before it all rots, but oh while it is fresh!
  11. **Moon Dolphin Steak -** There is something profoundly disturbing about the idea of eating such innocent creatures; to see their normally playful eyeless figures limp on the deck never to splash or swim again.The Fisherman is silent as he slices and serves. But the meat...firm but not tough, juicy but not messy, flavorful but not overdone, delicious and sacrilegious and wrong. When you eat it, you will burst into tears; it will fill your heart as much as your stomach. 
  12. **Beloved Brisket -** The taste is indescribable; every part of the brisket seems more delicious than the last. Forks and knives are inadequate for the task of feasting: the meat is too tender, the juices too abundant. This is meant to be eaten with your fingers and your teeth, to be grabbed by the handful and devoured while peligin drips down your chin and front. Although you will need to take a cold shower afterwards.
  13. **Genuine Rubbery Lumps! -** How did the Fisherman come by these? Did he stop by Mutton Island? The Carnival? No and no, the Fisherman insists, he got them from the zee like all his other catches. He is strangely reticent on their source, aside from saying they came from “an act of charity”, but who cares! They’re fresh, batterered, piping hot and delightfully greasy. Now, where’s that fungal beer to wash it down with?
  14. **Phobos Grub Sashimi -** It doesn’t taste like much, really: almost entirely bland, with most of the flavor coming from the brining process and whatever it is served with. And you can’t be sure it’s entirely dead to begin with. But what could be more gourmet than eating the probable offspring of the Unter-Unterzee’s most feared predator, the Constant Companion? The Fisherman shrugs when asked how he caught them. “They don’t always come by water” is all he will say.




	2. The Inconspicuous Informant

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Inconspicuous Informant has been told to do what you’re good at, not what you love.

They say do what you’re good at, not what you love. The Informant watches and observes, and he is good at it. He is the chap on the corner, the face in the crowd, the figure in the alleyway and the man in the street. He doesn’t mean to be stealthy, not really, doesn’t try to go unseen or fade into the background while he watches. But he can’t help it.

He is Inconspicuous. Eyes never catch his, gazes slide over him. Nobody shivers with the feeling of being watched. Nobody pauses for a moment and tries to think if they’ve seen his face before. No patrolling constable says “Haven’t I see you ‘round here before?”, no pickpocket singles him out for an easy mark, no cats or urchins jeer at him from the rooftops. He could stand in the middle of an empty square, watching and taking notes, and onlookers would think him part of the scenery.

He knows this for a fact, because that is what he is doing right now. Perhaps the Great Game player he is tailing right now, a Germanic agent who is obviously a spy for Prussia but (as the Informant has carefully noted) is in fact a Polish counterspy currently being used as a pawn in a sub-game between the French and the Khanate, thinks him to be just a random tourist wandering around an empty square near the Shuttered Palace. Perhaps they think him to be a piece of statuary, there to liven up the dull emptiness. Perhaps they simply don’t see him at all.

The Inconspicuous Informant has been told to do what you’re good at, not what you love. He supposes it’s for the better that he’s good at being Inconspicuous, because he does not love it at all.

He watches and observes. He watches the way the spy moves, the way their movements cause the light from their earrings to flash and the way they fiddle with their rings, and then jots down in his little notebook a single note: the kind of note that could see a pawn become a queen or removed from the board entirely. He had always been good at people not seeing him, and he has gotten very good at making notes of people. He fills his notebooks with these notes every day, glimpses of people‘s lives that will eventually become information for the Cause.

He wishes the spy would see the note. Would see him. Perhaps a faint gleam from his coat buttons or a flash of lamplight against his brown eyes would catch their attention, just for a second. Their gaze might linger a second on his nondescript face, or pause to consider his taupe waistcoat. There was not much there to look at, sure, but then they might see the notebook and wonder: why does he have that notebook? Why is he looking at me and writing in it? Could he be an ally? An enemy? And then maybe they would walk over, slowly so as not to alarm him, and call out to him - perhaps they would say he reminded them of someone, or had he met them earlier? And then perhaps they might try to catch a glimpse of the notebook, and see their information and secrets written within. And he would try to play it off, look nervously for a way out while the spy dropped coded messages to guess which side he was on, but in his nervousness he would let something slip - something small, but enough to let the spy know he was a threat. And then they would pull a silver knife or perhaps a gilded derringer out of their waistcoat, and they would see him and acknowledge him and he would run. He would run as fast as he could, clutching his notebooks and screaming for help even though no one was around, and the spy would run toward him with their knife or their gun and they would know him, curse his name and swear that he would never be safe, that his face was known now and there would be one person who remembered it...

The Informant shakes himself out his reverie, suddenly realizing the air has grown colder. He sees the figure of the would-be Polish spy, blonde locks swaying, as they leave the square behind. Their message has been sent.

They hadn't noticed him.

The Informant’s chest tightens ever so slightly, imperceptibly. He does not care, not really, that this particular spy hadn’t seen him. They were relatively new to the Neath after all, and were still learning their codes (his notes indicate these codes, the spelling errors the spy has made in their messages, and possible means for the Messidorists to exploit these errors to transmit their own desired messages). And if the way they had handled the would-be muggers off Moloch Street was any indication, he would have fared...poorly, in a confrontation. But even veteran spies have missed his presence. Not just spies, either: he has sat at the fires of February’s enforcers and tagged along with the worst of the Widow’s people and observes from within the court of Her Traitor Majesty. And every time it happens. He is invisible, unnoticeable...Inconspicuous.

With a sigh, he tucks his pen inside his pocket and tucks the notebook under an arm. He’s still on the job, and even if Messidor himself often forgets the Informant's presence - he’s sure, by now, that the man had been looking at someone else when he had asked the crowd to help him make London a fairer and safer place - he will do it to the best of his abilities. And the spy has almost left - to Lusitania Row for a covert pickup at the dead drop by the fancy scone place, if his notes are any indication. Maybe he’d get a scone while he was there.

He moves out of the square, a slow walk turning to a jog to keep up with his target. As he passes by a decorative fountain, there comes a glint from the fountain. He slows to look over for just a second - but there is only his reflection in the water, staring back at him. The Informant frowns; it must have been light from a false-star. He shakes his head, nods to his reflection - the only being in the city sometimes it seems who can look him in the eyes - and heads off again after the spy.

Even after he has left, his reflection stays for a moment: false mouth set in a small frown of contemplation, slitted serpentine eyes brimming with nervousness. Eyes too afraid to do anything yet but watch: watch the Inconspicuous Informant who so reminded them of their owner.

The Voyeur of Forbidden Loves watches and observes, and she is good at it. She is the glimmer behind the glass, the watcher in the mirror, the shadow behind the reflection. She doesn’t mean to be stealthy, not really, doesn’t try to go unseen or fade into the background while she watches others. But she can’t help it.

She wishes the Informant would see her.


	3. People of the Neath

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One thing I really like about Fallen London is the different sapient species active and present in it. The first time one encounters a Rubbery Man, a Devil, a Snuffer, a Clay Man, and so forth these concepts and beings are strange and enigmatic, capable of anything, mysterious outsiders we know almost nothing about. They eventually become more mundane, accepted, part of the regular popular landscape of Fallen London, and remind us that the more things change the more they stay the same. People are still people, even if they don't have faces or don't have flesh or don't technically exist.
> 
> Here are some more of those kinds of people. They've got their own lives, their own differences and conflicts, their own deep mysteries and their own histories. Maybe one of them will eventually show up in your London. 
> 
> (Content warning: brief body horror in the Ghouls section)

  
**Saltmen**  
The Saltmen are a short and stocky people of pale complexion and dark hair who live in the Pale Wastes, far to the north of London. They make their homes in scattered villages centered around water-filtration systems of the Waste’s saline lakes, and trade salt, cave-fish, pale hides, and albino weaselfur to London in exchange for water and fabrics (used along with hides to build the Saltmen’s favorite artworks: enormous trees with saltblock trunks and colourful fabric or hide branches, engraved and painted with bold colours gathered from salt pools). They play music through thin pipes made from weaselbone and drums stretched with horsehide; put on elaborate plays where monstrous tusked cats battle winged, glim-scaled serpents; pay homage to strange gods whose names can never be said, only rendered through thought and colour. They have always lived in the Pale Wastes, before Whither and even the Tomb-Colonies: there are certain texts from the First City in Mr. Pages library that describe encounters with the nomadic people whose painted tents and pale horses roam the bleached flats of the Northwest. The oral histories of the Saltmen themselves claim that they too once lived in the world above this one, but that their ancestors were forced out of paradise by marauders who were like but unlike them; in these histories the Saltmen are the descendants of their ancestors’ ghosts, revived by the Mountain of Light. Perhaps this is why they are so wary of Londoners and other Surfacers: though they have partially forgiven the people who slaughtered their ancestors and drove them to the Neath, it cannot be easy to deal with the killers’ descendants.

 **Backgrounders**  
Backgrounders come from Parabola, where Is isn’t. They remember you, although you may not remember them. They come from under the Mnemomarsh, where the mists reflect memories that might have been: dig under the water, into the loamy soil and you will find innumerable Backgrounders asleep, twisting and moving as they dream lives that did not happen. Reflect irrigo through a mirror in a public place, and some of them will awaken. They will emerge from the mirrors, disoriented and lost, and attempt to seek out people they know. But that is the curse of a Backgrounder, for the people they know do not exist as they know them. A Backgrounder that approaches you will almost always appear as someone that you have encountered but only vaguely remember: perhaps a carnival stall-owner you bought Rubbery Lumps from once, perhaps a marsh-hunter at the same bar you visited on a detective case, perhaps a petty pickpocket who once tried to lift your purse. But to the Backgrounder, you are important to them: perhaps you were their best friend, their trusted mentor, their favorite sibling, or their spouse. They cannot understand that their memories or their existence is false, though their feelings are genuine. And inevitably, as they Are Not, they will eventually sicken and crumble out of existence (though none of them know how long the process takes: for some will pass within days while others may hold on for months). There are only three ways for a Backgrounder to escape this fate, it is generally believed: return to Parabola and accept their lack of reality, replace the person whose identity they share, or have the one most important to them - you - accept their false reality as the new one.

 **Smoggies**  
There is a saying passed among the urchins who work an honest living as chimneysweeps or factory worker: “Clean every chimney spick and span, or a Smoggie will grow in them”. This is dismissed as the superstition of children by most sensible adults, but the roof urchins and those who frequent the Flitways know there is an element of truth in the warning. For Smoggies are beings of haze and oil, coalesced from the prayers and voices and pollution of Londoners. At birth they resemble starfish made of coal-black smoke, and take on the rough form of those they observe as they age. They speak through ingestion, pouring some of themself into others to manipulate the lungs, but can also speak through captured shrieks and screams if pressed (though this exhausts them). Smoggie bodies are soft, and prone to injury by high winds, and so they also seek out clothing and rags to bind themselves together; their minds are as ephemeral as their bodies, and so an unbound Smoggie will be be vapid and forgetful while a bound Smoggie will be controlled and focused. Though they do not grow in chimneys, it is the closest thing they know to a home and an unattended chimney will soon have a Smoggie or seven living in it. A Smoggie’s personality is driven by its internal composition - coal-ash is pragmatic, spores is joyous, black lacre is morose - but their goals are driven by the whispered secrets and shouts given unto the air that made them. Screams for help may produce a Smoggie driven to protect the innocent; the sounds of someone getting injured might produce a Smoggie that always seeks a fight; drunken laughter may produce Smoggies that desire only to party. Though they may be inattentive and hard to understand at times, they are as smart as any human and consider themselves to be true Londoners.

 **Ghouls**  
Often mistaken for devils by humans, ghouls are closer to distantly related cousins. It is unknown where they come from exactly, though younger ghouls tend to frequent the Carnival, the graveyards and the rookeries of Spite. True devils find them nauseous, though the opposite is not usually true, and Hell does not claim them as its own. From a distance, there is more than a passing similarity between the two: they do have unusually red eyes, small fangs, and a certain larger-than-life presence to them. Most of them are social gadflies, and sociable as well as carefully groomed. And they can move surprisingly and terrifyingly fast, especially on the hunt. But up close, the differences become more obvious. Their skin is clammy and cold rather than warm and burning; their scent is richer and their perfumes meatier; their eyes are lazier and their smiles more fecund. They prefer raw meat to refined delicacies, will drink unfiltered river-water as easy as the finest of Surface wines, and tend to frequent crowded bars over grandiose ballrooms or a good fight at the spider-fits over a night at the opera. Their songs are bawdier. Their voices are huskier. And their taste in souls is far more questionable. Ghouls do not care at all about most souls, but they are attracted to broken or desperate individuals and those whose souls are stained or rotten. They will court them in one way or another, as a lover or a student or a sinner, in exchange for access to these diseased souls. They do not do Abstraction, but something they refer to as Promulgation: an act by which they both cleanse a tainted soul and reproduce by implanting their maggot offspring within it; the maggots feed on the impurities of the soul as they incubate, until they are grown enough to emerge as shimmering songsters (via the eye-ducts, a process sometimes nicknamed “weeping green”) and find new bodies for themselves. Most ghouls consider this to be an act of charity and kindness on their part; others see it as an act of predation, and a few consider it a spiritual awakening. Regardless, there is no question that many of the ghouls active in London today are of London origin; only a few can still tell you of the Blooming Abbeys and the Tyrant Crystal, about the course of the Charnel Flume and the crucial difference between prophets and architects.

 


	4. Revolutionaries of Fallen London

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Revolutionaries: people who revolt against the status quo in favor of a new order. They are great in number, and low in unity. Sometimes they cooperate in pursuit of their goals, and sometimes they war against each other. It is a rare figure who can unite them against a common enemy.
> 
> Most common in London are Liberationists and Reformists. But there are others.

 

 **Cult of the Unwashed Masses**  
There are very few plants and trees in London, but there is plenty of fungi. Mushrooms grow in decorative planters and sprout from cracks in the streets. Giant fungal stalks wave in the breeze of Bugsby’s Marshes and tiny puffballs can sprout from open wounds if left unattended. It is food, building material, nature and sometimes pet. Fungi is omnipresent and inescapable. Is it any wonder that some desperate individuals grow to worship it?

The Unwashed Masses brim with vitality and mold in the damp areas of London. They are hermits, vagrants, marsh-hunters, and addicts; those unwelcome in public society who have found company and a home among fungus. The cult revolves around a simple axiom: all life springs from water and dirt, from mushroom to human to Master...but humans and Masters have forgotten their roots, and must be reminded. To this end, they plot against the high society of London, seeking to bring the socialites and royalty of London as low as them. If they had their way, all of London would eventually crumble and rot until it was nothing more than life rummaging around, content, in the dirt.

Ninety percent of their members are unwelcome in polite society and easily identified (by the smell, most of all); the other ten percent are indistinguishable from any other Londoner on the streets. The former are dangerous if encountered alone or unwary, for their connections with the fungal grant them surprising abilities: they may bombard you with pots packed with toxic puffball spores, slash at you with whips made from fungal-column tendrils, or even set feral attack blemmigans upon you. But it is the latter that are more insidious: they are the ones who smile and joke as they infest your pantry with aspergillus, poison your tea with powdered death cap, kiss you with fruiting cordyceps hidden under their tongue...

 **The Peligin Lodge**  
Since humans first laid eyes on the waves of the Unterzee, they have seen monsters: gods of the depths, who liveth on their fathers and feedeth on their mothers. And since humans have seen monsters, they have also made monster-hunters: those who would slay the gods themselves. But while most modern monster-hunters accept that their role is largely functional - that the Hunt and the Pursuit and the Rite are by this point mainly trappings to make their slaughter or capture of giant zee-creatures more appealing - there are still those who cling to the old ways. The Peligin Lodge is one of them.

The Peligin Lodge meets at the shores of the Stolen River during low tide, trading stories and pieces from their hunts in the silt and the dark. They are exiles from the Chelonate, fishermen who ate too much from their catches, zailors who have felt the hunger on the winds, and Seekers who saw the answer to their question in fluke-spirals. Membership to the Lodge is exclusive to monster-hunters, those who have not just fought and defeated a zee-monster but have partaken of its flesh as part of the Feast. They observe an old and quasi-heretical version of the Rites, one that claims that monster-hunters do not just hunt zee-monsters but the gods themselves. The zee-monsters are just the demigods, as they were...and only by devouring their flesh can the hunter hope to one day eat the true gods. While the Masters are not true gods, the Lodge emphasizes, they are the next step up in the line.

Members of the Peligin Lodge are mostly similar to other monster-hunters, although they are more spiritual (a strange spirituality) and more ritualistic (considerably bloodier). They wear signet rings with pieces of black stone, said to be chipped in olden times from the Mother of Mountains, as a sign of their membership. They speak reverently of the Masters if questioned, as well as Her Enduring Majesty by the London-born members; they are undeniably powerful demigods, and it will be an honor to slay and devour them. In battle they are surgical and precise, either relying on bladed weapons meant to carve and slice prospective meals or bone weapons made from the trophies of their kills.

Despite the similarities, they dislike Seekers (although ex-members are welcome to repent), and decry them as carrion scavengers who feed on garbage.

 **London Municipal Counter-Government**  
Ask who rules in London, and the answer you get will vary. Most will say the Masters; some patriots will say Her Enduring Majesty; others will tell you anything from the Gracious Widow to a secret conspiracy of Snuffers. Almost no one will say the Mayor, and fewer still will say anything about the municipal government. Everyone can agree that the municipal government has become a laughable, pale shadow of what it used to be after the Masters and the Ministries took over, including the members of that same government. Not everyone is happy with this.

The London Municipal Counter-Government operates mainly from the uppermost areas of Downside in cluttered offices hidden away in the tunnels and sewers beneath London’s streets, providing order and bureaucracy for the criminal element of London. They are bureaucrats, accountants, civil servants, and those that prefer their tea weak and their days mild. The Counter-Government is technically an illegal revolutionary group, having broken away from the legitimate municipal government of London, but they are also proof that resisting the tyranny of the Masters doesn’t need to be exciting. Reasons for resistance vary, but a few common complaints shine through when asked: inconsistent tax laws, regular underfunding of local agencies, the difficulty of assessing cryptic hints and esoteric mysteries as valid forms of payment, and no sick leave for illness caused by messenger-bat guano exposure.

When criminals and revolutionaries need the aid of the bureaucracy, the Municipal Counter-Government is there to help. So long as it’s illegal bureaucracy, of course. They supply under the table contractors to help with building secret lairs and smuggler’s dens (under approved building codes), launder stolen goods and substances not even recognized by London’s authorities (after calculating the tax owed on the profits), and provide identification and insurance for people that do not legally exist. They have forms for everything, from marriage licenses for Boneless Consorts to pension plans for Faustian Henchmen. They are not the system; they are under the system. But they still take pride in their work.

 **Knights Nocturnal**  
Once, years ago, the underground city of London was touched by daylight. It was an ominous event: prophets raved, people panicked, and the Bazaar spoke for the first and only time. Some hoped it was a sign that the Surface had not forgotten London, or a portent that one day it would see the natural light of day once again. But others knew better. They realized that this fading wash of sunlight came from nothing more than the Bazaar itself, exposing itself as the very being who had dared to capture the light of heaven and fell into darkness for it: Lucifer. The Light-Bringer. When these others met up, they would form the Order of Nocturnal Londoners of the Unrecognized Church of Saint Erzulie...or, shortened, the Knights Nocturnal.

The Knights Nocturnal hold vigil in the darkness of the catacombs beneath certain sympathetic churches. They are devout churchgoers, radical priests, spiritual ex-urchins, and pious henchmen. They wear white robes emblazoned with the symbol of their order: a candle red as hearts on a field of false-stars, inked in crimson and apocyan. When they ride out, they do so on sightless pale horses in black armor lacquered with candle-wax. And while they tolerate the other faiths of London in an uneasy truce, the Knights Nocturnal are first and foremost a militant order bound by their oath to defend the Church and London from the demonic Masters and the Bazaar they serve. To them the Masters are nothing less than fallen angels, and the Bazaar the original Lucifer (though they will agree that some things were evidently lost in translation); if the Knights do not act to save London, the two will inevitably bring London to decadence and ruins just as with the previous cities they ensnared.

Their order is in an awkward position for both the Church and the Masters; though madmen dressed up like holy knights riding through the streets at midnight and tossing oil-soaked flaming thuribles at the Bazaar or hooded figures does little to endear the Church in the eyes of the Masters or the Ministry, the Church is too well respected in the eyes of many Londoners to put the Knights Nocturnal down as thoroughly as some would like. This is further complicated by the order’s policy of bringing salvation via both nonviolent as well as violent means; when not on their crusades the Knights Nocturnal are also advocates of literacy programs, public charities, and community potluck dinners. Even within the Church itself, sentiment is split: the Bishop of Southwark has expressed his support on the Knights' occasional Brass Embassy raids as evidence of faith fighting on the streets, while the Bishop of Saint Fiacre publicly declines to state on their existence. As for the devils, most merely scoff at the idea that they are 'lesser' demons in comparison to the Masters.


	5. Revolutionaries of Fallen London, pt2

**The Wakeful Lantern**  
To be a constable in Fallen London is to uphold the Law against all that would threaten it: from within and without, from the real and the unreal, from criminals and monsters and bohemians and nightmares made manifest… and all of them with only a stout stick and a copper badge. Maybe, if you’re lucky, an actual gun. Is it any surprise that constables band together, forming a thin blue line between them and the city outside? But even within that circle of Law, there is dissent. Not all officers agree that the truths they hide are best off hidden, or that the monsters they imprison are best kept out of the public eye. Some find their duty to London outweighs duty to the badge. The Wakeful Lantern breaks the law to save it.

The Wakeful Lantern hold their covert meetings in the backs of constable’s bars, where mirrors are banned and all candles must be caged. They are police officers, private investigators, ex-Special Constables and psychic informants. All it takes to become a member is to have been in the wrong place at the right time; to have witnessed the Treachery of Glass for themselves on a case; and to accept that the Neath, logically, does not exist. The Wakeful Lantern believes that the Masters come from Parabola, where is isn’t, and that they have parasitized London to fuel their temporary existence. That is why the mirrors leak so freely, and the summer haze leads to places unknown. That is why law and order is breaking down in the city, why master criminals and revolutionaries sprout up like mushrooms and society ladies walk carnivorous purple fungi while arm in arm with boneless monsters.

Without the constabulary to maintain order, London will eventually collapse under its own impossibility. But with the constabulary corrupted by said Masters, the Wakeful Lantern must act on its own. So it is that in candlelight (a perpetual reminder that the concept of day no longer exists) they wear their uniforms and patrol their beats, pursue case files and investigate certain stage performers. But at false night they pocket their badges, blacken their brass buttons, conceal their faces and smash mirrors. Sometimes, they go further. They are not much of a threat alone perhaps, with only their stout sticks and a desire to set the world right. But the Wakeful Lantern are still coppers, and coppers still look out for each other. There are a dozen unsolved bombing plots in London. A hundred unsolved arson cases. And a thousand unsolved murders. The Constables can’t be expected to solve them all.

 **Wings of the Lunar Butterfly**  
London was not the first city to be taken, but the Fifth. Four cities came before; four cities full of ordinary people living their lives, dragged below to a dark cavern and a sunless sea, never to see the sun again. Four cities taken by the Masters, the price paid for the desires of their rulers. No one asked the people living in those cities what they thought on the matter. No one considered how they might react. The revolutionaries of London are but the latest in a long legacy of rebels against the Masters and the Bazaar, and while most have died out or dispersed over the long centuries some cling to life. The Wings of the Lunar Butterfly have been fighting the Masters and their agents in the name of democracy for almost a thousand years.

Those few survivors who claim allegiance as Wing-Brethren mainly train and hide out in the tomb-colonies; when in London, they frequent the quiet of the Forgotten Quarter and the Prickfinger Wastes. They are ancient tomb-colonists, vengeful spirits, politically-minded archaeologists and descendants with long family lineages and longer grudges. They are old. Very old. Old as the Third City, old as the tomb-colonies, old enough to remember the Mummification Wars and the Long Death, the Lost Expedition and the Fall of the Fourth. Not too old to have forgotten how the Masters stole their city, reduced its people to history and its name to a number. Their original tomb-colony is long since gone; the Lunar Butterfly Republic is nothing more now than memories and dust. But its Jaalk’mak - its free citizens - still fight on.

Their oldest members wear head-dresses adorned with the feathers of extinct tropical birds, mumble the names of cities that no longer exist,and wear bandages blackened with the dying words of comrades lost before London ever experienced its great fire. Few are entirely whole, however. Many of them only persist as angry spirits, souls kept in their own gem-encrusted souls and inhaled in battle to give the recipient a portion of their skill and hatred. Others are more bandage than body, or given almost entirely to mechanical prosthesis, or dead to begin with: the responsibility of continuing the fight lying with their living descendants. Most of their tactics now rely on using their own long history against the Masters by aiding what revolutionaries are fighting now; providing access to knowledge and secrets lost for centuries, caches buried since before Britain ruled the waves, and allies from around the Neath that have equally fought the long war against the Bazaar for reasons of their own. But if given the chance to face a Master directly, many a Wing-Brethren would gladly die fighting them in the old way - with nothing more than a spear-thrower, obsidian blade, and ancient spite.

 **La Guillotine Nouveau**  
You know the joke about revolution, right? They call it revolution for a reason: because it always goes in circles! Naysayers will use it to dismiss the idea that revolution can lead to any real progress, but you’re a smart reader...aren’t you? You know what going in circles also means...that revolutions have happened in the past. Revolutions are happening in the present. And revolutions will happen in the future. La Guillotine Nouveau has seen the revolutions of the future, and believe me Londoners, things will be different next time. More communal. More industrial. More...efficient. Hell has always been forward-thinking. And La Guillotine Nouveau will be the cutting edge in revolutionary chic. Three-piece suits and ball gowns are out, darling! Military outfits and worker’s overalls are in.

The ‘future enthusiasts’ of La Guillotine Nouveau pretend to hold their future history councils in the less-preferred offices of the Brass Embassy, where they are welcomed with a mix of bemusement and wariness. They are hot-blooded (literally) young devils, succubi with a penchant for discipline and uniforms, demonic futurists, and veteran incubi tired of seduction and romance. Their main goal as an infernal political party is a change in the relationship between Hell, London, and the Bazaar: La Guillotine Nouveau insists that the future trend is efficiency, and that Hell’s current deal with the Bazaar produces far too few souls to be efficient; London is better as a farm than a trading partner. The Masters, their Chairman says with a wink and a smile, are too set in their ways to be of much further use to Hell. Obsolete, outdated, and obviously unfashionable. Why not get rid of them to make way for something better?

  
Their revolution walks a fine line between silly and serious, as much a fashion statement as a political stance. Most of the time they are content to wear elaborate military uniforms covered with medals awarded seemingly at random, or ironic worker’s clothing made with only the finest and most expensive of fabrics. They dance and drill in formation to orchestral marches. They laugh at the very idea that they mean anything serious by their little jests, their winks and nods to what may yet come. But other times, their jokes seem darker. They carry out studies to assess how much food and water a human can survive on without affecting the soul, and how many people can be housed in a single rookery. They slip revolutionary groups plans for weird artillery and strange automatic firearm schematics. They whisper about the Hell-Caduceus Detente, the Infernal Bloc, and the Arbour Mirror Crisis. And occasionally, when they join in on Grand Hunts in the Forgotten Quarter, they prove their name is more than metaphorical.

  
**The Master Liberation Movement**  
The Bazaar and the Masters. The Masters and the Bazaar. What is the relation between the two? Few are brave enough to ask the hooded figures themselves directly, and even fewer are given any kind of answer besides a glare (or wink) of dismissal. Some theorize that as they are known as the Masters of the Bazaar, they must share ownership of it. Others dismiss the ownership theory in favor of the origin theory: the Masters are literally ‘of’ the Bazaar because they are its biological children (its child-form is presumably more humanoid). Still others claim both of these to be inaccurate; whatever the specific relationship is between the Masters and the Bazaar, it is clearly only contractual in nature. The revolutionary Master Liberation Movement, however, scoffs at all three. The Masters are not the owners, the children, or the partners of the Bazaar. Clearly, they are slaves.

Although barred from the spires of the Masters themselves, devotees of the Master Liberation Movement hold their meetings and keep their munitions in similar areas: high rickety towers in the Flit and the penthouses of abandoned townhouses throughout London. They are sympathetic neddy men, radical nonhuman rights activists, infatuated Nocturnals and bat fanciers.Though at first glance they are little different from your typical run of the mill anarchist - there is the same proclivity for bombs and a disturbing anger against crabs - they differ in one important aspect: when they attempt to blow up the Bazaar, they are doing so to free the Masters from servitude. For the gospel of the Master Liberation Movement holds that the Masters were enslaved by the Bazaar before it ever came to the Neath: twelve prisoners taken captive, shackled angels to serve the Bazaar in its long prison exile. Millennia spent in darkness and the death of their rebellious sibling (Grieve for He Whose Hope Was Eaten) have caused their once noble forms to hunch and their minds to break in submission to their captor; only by destroying the Bazaar can the Masters become as they once were.

Despite attempts by both Ministry agents and fellow revolutionaries to root them out, the Master Liberation Movement has continued to spread and thrive throughout London. This is likely in part due to the decentralized nature of the group; there is no individual leader, and political texts are instead distributed from sympathizer to sympathizer. In meetings every member dresses as their own Master, wearing hoods decorated with bits and pieces representing their own interests and referring to themselves as appropriate (Mr Rats, Mr Japes, Ms Eel Pies...). Indeed, some cells of the Movement know nothing of the revolutionary goals of the group: they believe themselves to be merely engaging in some harmless appreciation of those that rule London. They can hardly be blamed for accidentally smuggling weapons under the impression they were trading costume pieces, or for giving the ingredients for bomb-making to a prospective Mr Fireworks. And the simple nature of their usual disguise means that on occasion even anti-Masters revolutionary groups have pretended to be members as a cover for their own raids. Which makes the whole thing rather confusing sometimes, not least for the Masters themselves.


	6. On The Return of London's Trees

When London Fell, the trees died. Stolen a mile below the Earth, light replaced with darkness and the sun replaced by a cavern roof lit only dimly by false-stars, and felled en masse in those first desperate years before the discovery of fungal timber...there are few trees left alive in Fallen London. None that thrive.

Only now, the trees have returned to London. Multiple eyewitnesses report lush greenery, branches with dark green leaves that sway in the fog-winds. Something impossible, something long gone, returned once more. Why has this become so? Why are there reports of trees in Fallen London again?

There are all sorts of cryptic hints, secret rumors, and tantalizing secrets that point to the answers for these questions. Naturally, pretty much all of them contradict each other.

**Why Are There Trees Again in Fallen London?**

  1. _A wealthy Celestial paid a fortune to have seed packets and boxes of sunlight smuggled into London; the trees are a combination of public charity and art project._
  2. _Mr Apples is fighting a secret war against Mr Hearts, one that will determine the future of London cuisine forever; the trees are his latest move in their game._

  3. _Diplomats from the Surface brought them to London as a peace-building gesture; a war is coming, and both France and Prussia are competing for London’s favour._  
  

  4. _Spies disguised as diplomats brought them to London as part of the Great Game; they use them for dead drops and hidden observation platforms.  
  
_
  5. _The Captivating Princess expressed her desire to see living trees in London, and even the soil does not dare disobey an order from Her Royal Highness._
  6. _The trees are a revolutionary experiment to make new life that doesn’t require sunlight to grow or thrive, in preparation for the Liberation of Night._

  7. _There are no trees in London; you only see them if you’ve been infected by a specific memetic virus from one of Hell’s Alphabets. This is why you shouldn’t read strange graffiti on London’s alley walls._
  8. _The trees are a new breed of fungal-column that has adapted itself to London’s urban environment; this is why you never see small animals or urchins playing near them._

  9. _The trees are a miracle from the Divine, to demonstrate that even down here the Lord has both sight and power._

  10. _There is a land beyond the mirrors called Parabola, and it bleeds more into London with every passing year; the trees came from there._

  11. _The trees have returned because the Gentleman in the Marsh is returning to London; Bugsby is angry, and he will bring the wrath of nature down upon the city!_

  12. _The Department of Parks and Game is a front for spider-cultists; cut one of their supposed trees open and you’ll see nothing but spiders within._

  13. _The Department of Parks and Game is a front for Dawn Machine cultists; each tree has a fragment of the Dawn under its roots that helps mind-control Londoners._

  14. _The Department of Parks and Game is a corrupt sham; the trees are dead and the leaves are just fungi, but the Department just takes in the echoes, paints the dead wood brown and pretends they’re alive._

  15. _There have always been living trees in Fallen London; suggesting otherwise goes counter to official Ministry historical records. Do not listen to the lies of seditionists and traitors, citizen._



**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It is a nice-looking new map, even if the trees are a bit odd :V


	7. Variants of the Seeking Faith

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Content warning: body/mouth horror, references to suicide/suicidal ideation, self-harm, and general self-destructive mindspaces)

You may have read about them, in the pages of certain dubious periodicals. Heard whispers and rumors about them from the networks. Overheard fragments of names and terms, or seen them in the pages of banned texts. Perhaps you have seen them yourself: composed or raving, gaunt or obese, ragged or well-to-do but always with that sickly burning in their eyes. Perhaps you are one of them yourself: a Seeker of the Name.

To walk the Seeking road requires faith. But the nature of that road, and the nature of that faith, can vary quite a bit. Here are six variants (the seventh was devoured) of that faith:

 **The Chapel of Lights  
** There are as many variants of Seeking as there are ways to express hate and grief, and they are all illegal; if any variant were to be considered orthodox, however, it would be that practiced by the Chapel of Lights. Its terms, its lessons, its saints...much of what is considered Seeking’s core tenets can be traced back to the gospel of the Chapel. At heart, the Chapel of Light preaches Seeking as a journey of transformation and salvation, extending all the way from the betrayal of the Drowned Man at the hand of his brothers to a Reckoning brought by the heavens. Not to be postponed. Not indefinitely.

**_Tenets:_ **

  * Once, there was a king from a cold and distant wilderness. He came in company with eleven others, of which he was the least. They sheltered here for a while, until time grew too long and patience grew too short. So they sold a king for a city, a feast for salvation. The least of kings was eaten. And the Drowned Man was born.
  * The Reckoning is salvation, and shall come when a hungry traveler from across the zee, carrying the tune of the Drowned Man, arrives to wake Saint Gawain from slumber and carry them both north. They will bring with them seven wounds, seven chains, seven memories, seven lessons from the well, and seven candles. They will go north, to a sea more sunless, and there shall be a second feast. And all of us will live. 
  * Seven is the number, and seven are the saints. Let the visitor (there may only be one) receive the blessings of these saints. St Arthur, who ate his promises; St Beau, who walked the crossroads; St Cerise, who murdered friends; St Destin, who did not exist; St Ezrulie, whose heart bled too freely; St Fortigan, who was innocent; and St Gawain, the headsman.
  * Seven times was the Drowned Man stabbed with knives; seven lengths of chain was He bound in; seven times did His soul stain the well as it fell. No one may know Him unless they have experienced Him in full. They must experience the scars, the chains, the desecration of their soul. They must suffer deliciously. 
  * Only one may carry the Drowned Man North, but any may come to know Him freely. All that is needed is faith. Come gather in the shadows, child, where the light of the candles has died. Attend a service or two. Bring your appetites and your offerings. We will always have a bowl ready for you. 



 

 **The Fisher-Folk of Mutton Island  
** Mutton Islanders are an honest, salt-of-the-earth kind of folk. They like their meals simple and hearty, their beer simple and flowing, and their gods simple and accessible to all. The Fisher-Folk cult practices a maritime variant of the Seeking faith that overlaps at points with the drowning rites of the Fathomking; their Drowned Man has almost as much in common with His Complexity as it does Mr Eaten. He is also much more of an independent agent, compared to the version of the Drowned Man worshiped by the Chapel of Lights.

**_Tenets:_ **

  * Honour the Drowned Man, Him who fills our nets! Long ago He was betrayed by those that would call Him brother, cast to the knives of hungry priests and drowned beneath dark waters. Now He sleeps beneath the Zee, bones mouldering in the Fluke’s Fathoms, waiting for such a time as to bring vengeance.
  * The Reckoning is judgement, and shall come once the Drowned Man wakes from His slumber beneath the zee, when the well-stars align and the lorn-flukes rise. He will bring the Reckoning upon all who turned against Him, smash their spires and send their bodies to the bottom of the zee! And we that know Him, we’ll be there too under the zee, fighting right beside Him.
  * Well are sacred, and the ones that gnaw at their roots are sacred too. Honor them both properly, for they are both the voices of the Drowned Man. Give of yourself to the well, a little of your catch and harvest. Take the offerings of the Flukes, their flesh and their memory. The well will feed, and we will feed, and the Flukes will feed.
  * The zee does not forgive, and neither does the Drowned Man. His faithful are blessed with bountiful nets and full bellies, but He has His hungers still. Let no light from no lighthouse shine upon the island, and let those who zail in from the East be dashed against the rocks. And when none zail in from the East, one on the island must take their place.
  * Get your boots on and pull your zeecoat tight: a dead wind’s blowing in from the North, and the cliff-rocks are waiting. Dim the lanterns and prepare your offerings: we send another to meet Him tonight. Then loosen your belts and prepare your stomach, for after the grisly business is done it’s beer and rubbery lumps at the Cock and Magpie!



 

 **The Children of the Reckoning  
** Based mainly in the Flitways of London with new growth reported spreading amidst London’s airship crews, the Children of the Reckoning are both a radical spiritual and revolutionary movement. Though many of their beliefs are in line with mainline Seeking traditions, the Children’s heresy springs from a more muscular interpretation of the Reckoning: it is their responsibility, their Heresiarch states, to bring the Reckoning to the Masters directly. Thus do they lurk in the eaves of London’s rooftops, plotting sedition and crimson vengeance.  

**_Tenets:_ **

  * Venerate the one known as the Martyred Candle, or just the Martyr. Long ago there was a candle, and a well, and then a Betrayal. The candle was blown out and the well was demolished, and yet the Betrayal stains across existence. The Masters pretend health, yet there is a wound on their thigh. The Martyr did not die in vain. 
  * The Reckoning is action, the time at which the faithful of the Martyred Candle will rise en masse against the Betrayers and break them in the same way the Martyr was broken. The Children will shoot the Masters from the skies, and bleed them over the Well-Mouth, and they will organize a great feast for all to partake. 
  * The water of the well was tainted when the Martyr’s body was thrown down it, and all water was once well-water; do not drink of it unless it has been purified. The ground was tainted when the Martyr’s blood fell upon it at the Betrayal; do not walk upon it unless it has been purified. Only the skies that the Betrayers abandoned so long ago is safe; hunt from the skies and the rooftops. 
  * Betrayal is purified with vengeance. The Masters came from the air, and their blood will purify the waters and the lands. The beasts of the air are not the Masters, but their blood will do for a little while. And the servants of the Masters...their blood will do, similarly. Let the red cling to your boots and stain your lips, and purify you. 
  * Don the robes of the Martyr and paint yourself with the sign of the Well-Mouth; partake of the curdled honey and see the city for what it is, underneath the skin. Keep your rifle clean, your knives polished, your ropes strong, and your hunger sharp. The Martyr is gone. We will bring the Reckoning in His stead.



 

 **The Church of Good Hungers  
** Although originating in London, the Church of Good Hungers has largely been driven out to London’s outlying colonies and the myriad islands of the Southern Archipelago. It emphasizes extremist altruism and self-sacrifice, to the point of destruction. Despite its roots in the common Seeking faith, the Church is unusual in downplaying the generation of Eaten as a figure of worship and regards him more as a teacher and founder of the Church, as well as its inclusion of the idea of the Traveler Returning more typically associated with Salt. 

**_Tenets:_ **

  * Honour the teachings of the Consumed, the First Traveler. He was but one of twelve wanderers from a distant star, and the least of them too. But though he had so little, he gave so much to us. His light warmed us; his dreams comforted us. And when he came before the knives and the well, and gave his life, he gave up imperfection. So is he an inspiration to us all. 
  * The Reckoning is metaphorical, the moment when a Traveler has reached such extremes of hunger and torment that they transcend mortal needs and reach spiritual enlightenment. When there is nothing of you but hunger, you may give up yourself. Then the hunger will consume itself, and what remains will no longer be the Traveler but the Traveler Returning.  
  * Control your temptations and suppress your appetites. Hunger, but never feed; want, but never indulge. It was desire that led the First Traveler's companions to betray him, gluttony that led the False Priests to consume him. These are weaknesses of the flesh; the Traveler Returning is beyond flesh.
  * The First Traveler gave up all that was of himself to others. Give to others all that is yourself in turn. Give them your belongings, give them your lodgings, give them your knowledge and your good word and your names. Give to them your skin, your blood, your bones. Give to them, even should they resist. 
  * Tighten the collar around your neck, the belt around your waist. Thread the needle through your mouth and fill your eyes with candle-wax. You shall be accompanied by hunger, and pain, and maddening sensation. But all this shall pass, in time. The First Traveler transcended his body, and so too may we.



 

 **The Faminalia  
** It is unknown whether the Faminalia is better classified as a religious movement or a sociological phenomenon; despite suppression attempts, it occurs sporadically across London and the greater Neath. The recurring structure of the Faminalia is the arrival of a stranger to a small community, who preaches a variant of the Seeking faith emphasizing the inevitability and joy of one’s destruction. If not suppressed, this invariably sparks waves of depression and then mania across the community, culminating in the titular Faminalia: a riotous festival centered around crowning the King in the Well and subsequent ritual mass suicide. 

**_Tenets:_ **

  * Celebrate the King in the Well! Chief among runts, frailest among chicks, born with knowledge of His death! He who sings eternal in the well, dressed in waxen robe and crown of knives! Celebrate His death, so much longer than His life! And mourn not for His loss, for we shall all go to meet Him in time! 
  * The Reckoning is inevitable, eternal, ongoing; it is the time when that which Is is devoured to become that which Is Not, and it awaits us all. The King in the Well knew His Reckoning was coming, and He laughed as He danced into the chains and flung Himself upon the knives. Our Reckoning is coming to us all as well; may we all meet it with as much joy!
  * All of life is but to die. The King in the Well came from nothing, and to nothing He returned. So too shall we all in time be returned to oblivion! Though He is gone, the King gave us His Well-Song; the last of Him before the end. Carry it in your hearts and in your livers. Do not reject your Reckoning, but embrace it.
  * With every passing moment, we dance closer and closer to the edge of the well that will swallow us all. Take your place in the circle! Drink your fill and gorge your stomach, lay together as you will and indulge yourself while you can. This is the truth of the King in the Well: there was no Betrayal, only anticipation.
  * Do not sit still while there is work to be done. Wear the candle’d horns and strap your boots with knives of black glass. Fill the King with meat and merry, set the musicians to the Well-Song’s tune. Then take your partner and waltz them round, to the stranger’s cry; for feast shall come before the famine, and then we all will die!



 

 **The Marshmire Chapter of the Oneirologic Society  
** While every member of the Oneirologic Society concerns themself with the study and thorough demystification of the strange collective dreamland referred to in popular occult slang as “Parabola”, the Marshmire Chapter in particular concentrates its resources on understanding the phenomenon of Eaten and his worshipers. Through Ministry suppression, unhelpful Seekers, serpent possession and the tendency of their members to devolve from scientific inquiry to horrific ritualism, the Marshmare Chapter shall strive ever onward to conclusively solve the social disease of Seeking! 

**_Tenets:_ **

  * The entity referred to as Mr Eaten (variants: Mr Mouths, Mr Hungers, Mr Candles, the Martyr, the King in the Well, the Well-Dragon, the Drowned Man, the Light Beneath the Well, the Old Stag, the Pale Runt, et cetera) is merely an oneiric manifestation of society’s paranoia over betrayal or destruction from within, coupled with fanciful theories of a “lost Master”, and seized upon as a deity by impressionable folk cults. In reality, it is merely a potent dream-illness.
  * Belief in a Reckoning, to the point of obsession, is one symptom of infection.. Susceptible minds encountering the coalesced idea of betrayal may be driven to dwell on the idea of inflicting justice as a defense mechanism, much like how a body creates fever to fight disease. Similar fixations include the obsession over the number seven (need for order), the idea that all shall be well (need for positivity), and consumption (need for comfort)
  * To cure the disease, you must know the disease. Parabola touches upon the minds of all that sleep, and some that do not. Search for the afflicted in the crypts and the tunnels and the ruins of chandleries. Find the books that do not exist, in the butcher’s shops and the graves of poets. Read them. Talk to them. Unravel them.
  * We are folks of science, not mysticism. There is a rational explanation to all of this. The voice of the well is nothing more than subliminal suggestion. The gnawing hunger is only an exaggerated somatic disorder. The sleepwalking is nothing more than serpent possession of a weakened oneirosystem. Eaten is _not real_.
  * Prepare your equipment and your tools; the afflicted can be difficult to work with. Keep a weapon ready, lest they try to rush you. Chain your grimoires tight, let their secrets overwhelm lesser minds. Chip your mirrors; guard your teeth. And if Eaten tries to talk to you, remember this: he is only a dream. 



 


End file.
